Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E.

  • Braid, James, 1795?-1860.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electro-biological phenomena considered physiologically and psychologically / by James Braid, M.R.C.S.E. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    large ('Medical Notes and Reflections') how the direction of the expectant attention to any organ or part of the body excites actions in that part. The mesmerist, or hj^pnotist (as Braid prefers to call him), is also well aware that he can present any image he chooses to his patient by a word or a hint. It is, there- fore, very natural for Mr Braid to conclude, that the Viennese patients expe- rienced all those sensations, or rather quasi-sensations, merely because they more or less obscurely expected them ; in other words, that they directed their expect- ant attention to the parts apparently operated upon, and the sensations ensued. The uniformity in character of these quasi-sensations is no objection to this view; for the uniformity in character of all spectral illusions is one of the most notice- able of things about them. There is a law of unity of procedure in the pheno- mena of disease, quite as clearly displayed as in those of health. Yet the conclusion of Mr Braid is not obligatory. The same effect may be produced by two differing causes. A man may perceive the image of a tree, because the radiance of a veritable tree paints it on his retina; but he may also perceive the image of a tree because his nervous system is disordered, and a tree of conception is thereby intensified into a tree of quasi-sensation. The percep- tion is the same in both these cases. A hypnotic patient may see a book, be- cause a book is placed before her; or she may see a book, because an experi- mentalist tells her his glove is one. Mr Braid has failed to perceive this alter- native, and his inference is therefore defective. His experiments may be good and true; but so may those of Reichenbach. His effects may have been pro- duced by suggestion ; Reichenbach's by objects. Similar as they are, and divers as are their respective causes, they do not contradict one another. For our part, we accept them both. Braid's cases seem to be unexceptionable.—Pp. 141,142. I have thus fairly quoted what appears opposed to my views, as well as what accords with them ; and now a word in explanation on one point. From the statement contained in the sixth last sentence of the above extract, the author seems to have mistaken me on one point. I have all along been well aware that the mere fact of my experiments having proved the all-sufficiency of the subjective or personal influence of the patient to produce in himself the ordinary phenomena of mesmerism, did not ignore the alleged possibility of the like phenomena being produceable by external agency also. I am well aware of the co-operative power of certain visible and tangible impressions, even of a slight nature, in the production and modification of these phenomena,—and I have stated so in my lecture ; but, inasmuch as the mind of the patient alone is capable of producing the phenomena, when no process whatever of another party is in operation, and that external agency can never, as I apprehend, be brought into play in such a manner as to enable us to assert positively and certainly that the mind of the patient has not also been at work. Baron Reichenbach and the mesmerists are placed in this dilemma, that they have no actual, and substantial, and indubitable proof to adduce, in support of the all-sufticiency of their alleged objective influence, where the power of the mind of the patient is entirely excluded. Our relative positions, therefore, stand thus :— Let X represent the effects produced upon a sensitive patient by the processes of the mesmeriser; and let a represent the influence of the mind of the patient upon his own body ; and b represent the influence of the mind and physical acts of the operator upon the patient. We then have but my experiments have proved a + 6 = x; a — h a Reichenbach and the mesmerists, however, cannot prove b — a = x, because they have no purely physical re-agent,, or odylometer, by which to demonstrate such, influence. ^ ;^.,,,.3-r'. . • ., . . . 1,1. I am therefore, rtiuch iri-the sariie jibsition as the reviewer, when he says f D 162) •— As for the hypothetical entities entitled animal magnetism or odyle, whether singular like caloric, or dual like electricity, we reject it and its